“Mechanisms driving the rapid evolution of genomes”

David Pellman, M.D. is the Margaret M. Dyson Professor of Pediatric Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, a Professor of Cell Biology at Harvard Medical School, an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and the Associate Director for Basic Science at the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center.  He received his undergraduate and medical degrees from the University of Chicago.  During medical school, he did research at the Rockefeller University.  His postdoctoral fellowship was at the Whitehead Institute/Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The Pellman Lab works on the mechanism of cell division and how certain cell division errors drive rapid genome evolution.  His research has contributed to the understanding of cell division, the origin of cell division errors in cancer, how cell division errors drive genetic instability and the mechanisms driving rapid evolution of cancer genomes. Our contributions include (1) the co-discovery of formin-dependent actin nucleation and a mechanism for spindle positioning during asymmetric cell division, (2) discoveries establishing that whole genome duplication can drive tumorigenesis, alter cell physiology, and accelerate evolutionary adaptation, and (3) the discovery of a mechanism explaining chromothripsis, a mutational process that generates rapid karyotype evolution in cancer and congenital disease.